Former Rare design director Gary Napper has shared a little about what his forthcoming dinosaur survival project The Lost Wild shares with Rare’s mysterious nature fable Everwild, which was cancelled by Microsoft during a round of Xbox cuts last summer. He’s also said more about how The Lost Wild compares to the game Napper is best known for, Creative Assembly and Sega’s Alien: Isolation. According to Napper, Isolation was in some ways an “easier design challenge” than both Everwild and The Lost Wild, because there was less need to make the Alien feel like it had an agenda besides trying to murder the player.
I’ve been wondering about connections between The Lost Wild and the abandoned Everwild since reading Napper’s thoughts from June about wanting players to “respect” The Lost Wild’s dinosaurs. Everwild, from what little we knew of it, was about tending to nonhuman animals while exploring and cultivating a Fern Gully-ish paradise. True, Everwild’s creatures are a lot cuddlier in trailers than the terrible lizards that throng The Lost Wild’s island setting, but both games want you to live and let live, to some degree.
All this comes with the caveat that Napper joined Lost Wild developers Great Ape years after the project began life – he didn’t come up with the concept, but his previous experiences are certainly relevant.
“I feel very fortunate to be in a position where I can draw from my experience on two big games that I’ve worked on with both Alien: Isolation and Everwild,” Napper told me, in a fresh interview. “Both were trying to create games which presented creatures in new and interesting ways and had very different goals in what those end experiences would be!
“I feel like Alien: Isolation had the easier design challenge because at the end of the day if the Alien got close, it killed you and you restarted from the last save,” he went on. “There was no great need to make it feel believable or consistent up close. Trying to create animals or creatures that when observed behave in a realistic and believable way and seem to have their own drives and purpose can be a much harder task.
“I feel there is an argument to say that The Lost Wild is actually closer to Everwild in this way,” Napper said, “because we are trying to depict fantastic, incredible, yet grounded and believable creatures in a way that shows intelligence and character but also results in a compelling gameplay experience. However, this team already had a great handle on this challenge way before I joined.
“The thing that keeps sticking out to me as unique in this game is the mantra of ‘Animals, not monsters’,” he concluded. “I want there to be a form of awe and respect in being around these creatures and one that could lead to emotional conflict in the player. I think if some of our players feel the want to avoid our dinosaurs and not kill them, but let them be free, then we will have succeeded in our goal of presenting them as believable animals.”
I would love to hear from more former developers of Everwild. I find the game interesting because it seems out of synch with Xbox first party’s vision for gaming at large – there are no guns or cars or swords, just pocketfuls of seed. “But what do you DO in the game,” I can imagine a Microsoft executive asking, like a Dalek confronted by a flight of stairs. That said, I’ve long had misgivings about Everwild’s portrayals of druidic humans living in harmony with other animals. In a world where billions of nonhuman creatures are slaughtered daily, I just find this kind of escapist and idealistic imagery risible, however heartfelt.
That’s an opinion derived from a couple of trailers and screens, of course. Besides, who died and made me Pope of Animal Rights? In any case, I find The Lost Wild more “honest” as a portrayal of creaturely coexistence, because there’s some antagonism between you and the beasties you’re encouraged to “respect”, not kill. You aren’t just being soft-served Wholesome scenes of friendly salamanders.
Look out for a full Lost Wild interview feature soon. Amongst other things, Napper spent some time correcting my guesses about the dinos in the trailer. The cheek of the man! I once made a whole pterodactyl out of LEGO, you know. Anyway, you can find The Lost Wild on Steam. It’s out in 2027.